Reimagining Black Masculinities: Race, Gender, and Public Space addresses how Black masculinities are created, negotiated, and contested in public spaces, focusing on how theory meets praxis when mobilizing for social change. Contributors disentangle complexities of the Black experience and reimagine the radical progressive work required for societal health and wellbeing, forming a mental picture of what the world has the potential to be without excluding current realities for Black boys and men, civic manhood, maleness, and the fluidity of masculinities. These realities are acknowledged and interrogated across private and public contexts, media, education, occupation, and theoretical perspectives. This book encourages readers to reenvision social identity as an ongoing phenomenon, asserting that collective vision informs action and collective action informs possibilities for peace and freedom in the world around us. Scholars of communication, gender studies, and race studies will find this book particularly interesting.
Mark C. Hopson is director of African and African American studies and associate professor in the Department of Communication at George Mason University. Mika'il Petin is assistant vice president of student success at Motlow State Community College.
Editors' Note: Black Masculinity Studies, Yesterday and Today Mika'il Petin and Mark C. Hopson Foreword: The Sheer Force of Our Re-Imagination: Exploring Black Masculinity and the Public Ronald L. Jackson II Introduction: On Reimagining Mark C. Hopson and Mika'il Petin Chapter One: "Mama Knows Best": Exploring Black Men's Perceptions and Reimaginations of the Phrase "Mama's Boys" Sakile K. Camara and Carmen M. Lee Chapter Two: "She's Just a Friend (with Benefits)": Examining the Significance of Black American Boys' Partner Choice for Initial Sexual Intercourse Tommy J. Curry and Ebony A. Utley Chapter Three: Reverse Interest Convergence, Kaepernick, and Nike: An Educational Lobbyist Playbook for Equitable Funding by Investment in Urban Public Education Aaron J. Griffen and Derrick Robinson Chapter Four: Outkasted Black Masculinity: Shifting the Geographical and Performative Landscape of '90s Hip Hop Marquese McFerguson Chapter Five: The Killing of Black Boys: A Collaborative Critical Autoethnography on "the Talk" Mark C. Hopson, Gina Castle Bell, and Richard Craig Chapter Six: A Conversation on Black Masculinity with Principal John Hawkins Snowdy of Baltimore Collegiate School for Boys Kimberly Moffitt Chapter Seven: (Re)educating Boys and Men of Color by Shaping Community Support Kenneth Brown Chapter Eight: "We Demand an Equal Show Upon Matters Effecting Our Industrial Welfare": Black Manhood, and Labor Activism in Early Jim Crow Illinois Alonzo M. Ward Chapter Nine: The Essence of the Black Man: An Exploration of Black Masculinity Through Double Consciousness in Native Son Isaih Dale Chapter Ten: The Battle of the New Age Black, Male Hero and Hegemonic/Toxic Masculinity: An Examination of the Representations of Black Masculinity in Black Panther Erika M. Thomas & Malcolm D. Gamble Chapter Eleven: "Me Miran Raro": Bad Bunny and the Creation of a New Discursive Space in Latin Trap Music Larissa Hernandez Chapter Twelve: Dual Socialization and Black Academic Intellectuals: A Research Report Rutledge Dennis Afterword: The Beautiful Ones Were Born Sometime Ago Mark Anthony Neal About the Contributors
The Black Lives Matter movement has brought much-needed attention to the social issues surrounding Black masculinity and highlighted the need for further scholarly study of this identity formation. Hopson (George Mason Univ.) and Petin (Motlow State Community College) have curated a compelling collection of essays that assess the current gender landscape and suggest ideas for potential future analysis. The text's particular focus on public spaces and activism allows its contributors to speculate on the ways in which American culture stigmatizes Black masculinities and to reconstruct new possibilities for Black manhood. Essays draw on diverse methodologies and canvass disparate social arenas to elucidate the breadth of influences that shape Black masculinities. They also cover a broad array of spaces such as education, labor, and intimate relationships, as well as textual creations from cinema, music, and print fictions. These areas are tied together by the rich imagining of new interventions for activists and thinkers around the performance of Black masculinities in the social world. This collection would be of interest to African American literary scholars as well as gender studies and Black feminist scholars. Summing Up: Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty. * Choice *
